International Conference on the Conflict in Sri Lanka:
Peace with Justice, Canberra, Australia, 1996

Tamils and The Meaning Of History

Dr Hellmann-Rajanayagam

German-Malaysian Institute in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Doctoral thesis on Cultural
Nationalism in Tamil Nadu, India, Sometime Visiting Fellow at the Institute of South East
Asian Studies, Singapore and at St Anthony's College, Oxford, Sometime Associate Professor
in Asian History at the University of Kiel, Germany

* Preliminary versions
of this article were read in Colombo and Hongkong. I thank all my colleagues who made
helpful comments and suggestions, especially Sudipta Kaviraj and Dietmar Rothermund who
read drafts of the paper. The research was financed in part by the German Research Council
and the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft, both of whom I also want to thank
in this place.

Introduction

At the moment, there seems to be a lull in the Sri Lankan crisis with the army
apparently in control in Jaffna and the LTTE lying low. Nobody, however, should deceive
themselves that the problem is solved or that the army is finally in command and the LTTE
beaten. More has to happen to effect a solution in Sri Lanka than just military actions.
Still, from the outside, nothing much can be done but wait and see. In the final event,
the Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka have to find a solution among themselves, not one
that is imposed from outside.

What we can do, however, is make suggestions and give advice, maybe in the manner of
Bismarck's famous `honest broker'. But what is the place of the historian in this
scenario? How can he give advice? Well, maybe not. That is not the task of historians.
Their task is to elucidate the origins of events, to say why and how things happened to
enable society to take actions on the basis of this. If, however, we try to do that,
several questions arise at once, first, what is history, and second, what is the meaning
of it for different societies. This is what I want to explore in this paper: what does
history mean for the Tamils of Sri Lanka, and how does this perception influence the
conflict and the shape it takes? I intend to demonstrate in this article that

1) the Tamil perception of history is different from that of the West even if the
definition of history itself is borrowed from there,

2) that the political use of history determines its perception and limits its
functions, and

3) that wider functions which we assign to history are, for the Tamils, located
elsewhere (we will see where later in the discussion).

Before describing the Tamil perception of history, however, it will be useful to
consider, in some preliminary remarks, some fundamental points about history and to state
somewhat boldly some assumptions about the `Tamil view of history' which will be
substantiated in the latter part of the article.

History: a technical term

History is the relation of the past to the present. The remark made by the historian
E.H. Carr[1] in the 60s might seem a truism nowadays, but that
does not make it less true or less crucial to the craft. In the meantime, the concept has
been polished, extended and modified, but its basic significance has lost nothing of its
power: history is the link between past, present and, by extension, future. What we see
much more clearly now is the nature of this relationship: from the past that exerts its
influence on the present, we have now come to the present that influences and shapes the
past as well: historical perception extends the present and its preoccupations into the
past and thus sees the past with the eyes of the present.

The problem to address then is not so much what is history, but how is history used, to
say it with a word by Habermas,[2] the 'public use of history',
to what purposes is it put, by whom, and with which objectives? The use of history is
inseparable from historical research and historiography.

To discuss history nearly always also means to compare. This, however, immediately
raises questions about these comparisons:[3] If one's own history
is comparable to that of others, what does that imply? In the first instance it implies
several different histories, that, moreover, belong to different and distinguishable
groups. On the other hand it means that they show certain common features as well, so that
one is able to evaluate them against a given scale and see how they perform. But what is
this given scale against which history can be compared: one of values, of achievement, of
civilisation, of antiquity?

The second point then is, in what ways is this (my?) history different from others, in
what way does it exclusively belong to me (or to us), in what way can it enhance my
perception of identity, of being myself, of having a place in the world. And how
does one judge the differences? Are they simply neutral in the sense of 'it takes all
kinds to make a world'? Do they show up one's own sordid traits the more starkly? Or do
they tend to enhance the sense of one's own worth: how much better are we than others?

This is the all-important question: what is the yardstick for measuring the differences
and evaluating them? How and why do we compare? What makes my history so similar to
another history that I consider it the same, but sets if off from a third one? Who decides
about these differences, who draws the borders? From what common base do we proceed to
discover differences, or is it all 'relative'? Is there a 'common base' at all, or are we
all 'incomparable'?

And there also lies the crux of this term 'the use of history': use of history for
precisely what purpose and what function? And above all: who uses it?

If the basic purpose of the use of history is to give people a place in the world,
something to hold on to, we come immediately up against a contradiction, because in some
cases, history does not seem to be called upon to do this. Identity - and that means place
in the world - are often established by religion and myth. What use and meaning can
history have in this context, since it is obviously answering a felt need?

History can only establish something above that, which is difficult to conceptualise,
or something more basic: a right to be, a right to exist at all. Seen in this
context, i.e. if we assume that in certain cases identity precedes history, and if history
establishes the legitimation of existence, then identity, the consciousness of self, looks
inward, towards the in-group. Only after this step historical consciousness can
emerge to establish boundaries, to perceive differences and to stake claims over disputed
terrain. History serves to forge added cohesion. This is a point of view not widely
accepted. But remembering one's past need not necessarily mean antagonism towards others.
What is, however, true, is that historical consciousness and the conscious use of
history are two concepts going beyond mere identity affirmation.

From 'having a place in the world' and comparisons with other(s') histories we come to
another vital point: whose history is it anyway: Who decides which history is the
definitive one? Why is this acceted or rejected? How can the diverging histories of
different social and political groups be the same or be merged into one history,
distinguishable from other histories? And which one, in the case of divergence, is the
definitive one? Is there a definitive one?

The so-called German Historians' Debate af few years ago is an extreme example of the
eternal question: to whom does history belong, who can legitimately claim it and who is
entitled to write the definitive history? There seems to be an even more fundamental
problem in the Tamil case, namely to prove the right to be there at all. The Tamils are a
numerically large people with a distinctive culture, literature, language, philosophy and
a consciousness of belonging together, who were, however, seldom or never, unified as one
'nation' in one state or under one government.

The question is: 'what have they made of this'? One striking factor is that
historically perceived secondary virtues like industriousness, diligence, economic skill
etc. are cited as justifications to claim or retain advantages and privileges: a stand
taken by a people on the defensive, and history is used as the last line of defence.[4]

We will come back to these questions when discussing Tamil and Sinhalese history and
the perceptions to whom Ceylonese history belong. The possession of this history is
fiercely contested by both groups. At the moment we will content ourselves with stating
that people claim to have the definitive view of history and thus possess history. All
other views are considered wrong or distorted. This is fairly uncomplicated as long as
your history is sufficiently different from mine to not cover the same areas. But what if
your and my history is acted out on the same terrain? When one and the same history is
claimed by several groups with different interpretations?

History: a Problem of Perception

These are the questions thrown into bold relief by Tamil history in Sri Lanka and the
Tamils' perception of it. Their emphasis on history, historical precedence, the proof
or judgment of history, in short, their perception and use of history, go to prove not who
or what or how they are or how they came to be there (they know that), but to prove that
they have a right to be there, a right to be. If we start off with this crucial
assumption, a lot of things fall into place, and we can begin to study Tamil
historiography in Jaffna from quite a new angle: The Tamils are trying to recover
their history, thus assuming that somebody has taken it away from them, and this somebody
are the Sinhalese who in turn try to protect their history from onslaughts and
usurpation by the Tamils. Who possesses the history, possesses the country, possesses the
right to rule, the right to exist.

And here we confront the problem mentioned above: whose history is being recovered? To
whom does the history of Ceylon belong? Now we see for the first time clearly the
differences between the Tamil and the Sinhalese perception of history: Tamil history
becomes more and more inclusive, Sinhalese history is exclusive: the Tamils
include all Ceylonese history in their history which can assume two ways: either the whole
Ceylonese history is legitimate history as that of the two peoples living in the island,
or all Ceylonese history is subsumed under the bracket 'Tamil history'.

For the Sinhalese, on the contrary, only Sinhalese history can be Ceylonese
history, everything else is an intrusion and an assault. Among the Tamils the inclusion
works on the internal as well as on the external level: The external one can be
illustrated with Elara (see below), the internal one with the filtering down of the term
Tamil from only applicable to Vellalars to all castes. The filtering down of Tamil history
creates solidarity among Tamils against an outgroup who has no Tamil history at all, but
it is always a precarious unity: Indian Tamils and Tamils in India are excluded, geography
and politics play their part. On the other hand, when history filters down, changes occur,
history does not trickle down in a pure form, it gets mixed with the history from below,
and this creates new, and often violent, contradictory, perceptions.

Having got so far, we can now concentrate on the way history is perceived, written and
used among the Tamils. Of course, the Tamils are not unique in using history for political
ends, on the contrary, peoples in the 19th century who strove to become nations have had
similar problems and used history to prove who and what they were and where they came from
and that they therefore had a right to nationhood. But that is exactly the point: other
peoples proved who and what they were, but I doubt whether they set out mainly to justify
their very existence: they established existence in history, but not through history.
The small emerging nations in the 19th century said 'we are a great people, so we have a
right to exist as a nation or at least to be recognised as a nationality', whereas the
Tamils say: we are a great people, we have a right to exist.

Why History?

This raises three questions, namely,

1) why have the Tamils to justify their very existence,

2) why by the means of history, and why

3) do they not prove whoand what they are by means of history, as many
other groups do?

The answer to the third question is because it is not necessary, and the answer to the
second is because by other means it is not sufficient. Let us try to answer the first
question then by illustration. The Tamils do not need history to prove who and what they
are and how they came to be what they are, because they confirm their identity by other
means, namely, religious, cultural, literary, social. They are secure as Tamils, and Tamil
culture and religion do not need a state, they are timeless.

To be sure, history (here in the sense of tales of the past) plays a part in this, but
we should not project our theoretical understanding of history or of historical
consciousness onto a culture which perceives these things differently, and even if these
phenomena are historical, they are not perceived as such by the Tamils. For them to be Tamils,
a history of the Tamil state or the Tamil empire or even the Tamil people is incidental,
they feel not less Tamils because this empire is spurious or because there never might
have been a Tamil state.

This is not vital to their identity as it is to that of the Sinhalese, for whom the
existence of a Buddhist state in time is a precondition of their own identity. But to
prove that they have a right to exist, to be there at all and then to be there as Tamils,
i.e. as Jaffna or Ceylon Tamils, they do indeed need history, in this case history
decisively in the form of history of a state, and this is an essentially modern phenomenon
(see below).

This approach seems to be contradicted by a recent study by Bruce Kapferer on myths of
state, nationhood and violence,[5] where he propounds the very
interesting theory that the mythical understanding of their past provides a very unique
and very historical theory of history: he claims that the Hindu-Buddhist doctrine
of karma is practically the essence of history and historical theory.[6]
Persuasive as this sounds, I am not sure that it applies to the Tamils in SL, to say
nothing of those in India. For the Sinhalese it might well be true, but for the Tamils the
sources show that if the Tamils had a 'sense of history' it was only marginally connected
with karma (which is an individual, not a group concept).[7]

On the other hand, Kapferer's linking of karma with history is, in my mind, a stroke of
genius which puts paid to many fond theories of the Indians not 'having history': what
could be more 'historical' than a theory of constant development and evolution, where the
past always exerts a decisive influence on the shaping of the present and the future,
where present and future are always predicated on events of the past? But perhaps we
approach the problem from the wrong angle: maybe we should broaden our concept of history.
In trying to do that, we come up with two observations:

1) history as we know it is obviously not vital for the identity of the Tamils, and

2) the concept of what constitutes the past and what constitutes one's own
past is vital.

Yet this concept of what constitutes one's own past differs in the West and among the
Tamils. The problem then is how to define the past: not only is it largely constructed by
us, but the method of construction is quite different in the East and the West: for the
West, it is the (hi)story of relations between man and man, for the Indians it is the
(hi)story of the relations between god and man: therefore, for being Tamil, no history of
state was needed, but to justify existence, it was. Yet before we rush off to term it all
history, we have to consider what the Tamils themselves perceive as history, as
establishing and proving their existence, and it looks as if only history in the western
sense is seen as being able to do that.[8]

History in the West and in the East: same term, same difference?

Western theories of history and historiography have mainly looked at Europe and either
denied that other people had a 'proper' history at all (or at best an inferior one),[9] or completely overlooked them. Seldom has it been acknowledged
that history and historiography might have different meanings for other cultures: for some
who are we, for some, why are we here, how did we come here and why, but for some also,
what right have we to exist? And depending on which of these questions history is expected
to answer, where are answers to the remaining questions to be found: in religion, culture,
myth!?

Here we come up against a seeming contradiction: for the Tamils in the late 19th
century, only the past and the history constructed and furnished by the West were accorded
the status of 'history' and 'historical', whereas the past of the East was termed
'religious' and 'mythical': a definition, at the same time containing a statement of
value, of history coined by the West, but accepted by the Tamils. Yet the function
given to this history was quite different from that of the West.

If we accept this, we can then deduce the intentions with which 'Tamil histories' or
'Histories of Jaffna' have been written and the purposes they were being put to. These
purposes, I would argue, are entirely and openly political and I would add, since all
history is political, partisan. And if we look at the controversies that have raged in
this context, we can see that the facts, let alone their interpretation, are in many case
the bone of contention: was there a kingdom of Jaffna, were there groups like the Tamils
and the Sinhalese at all, who ruled the island, who were the first settlers, even, was
there a Vijaya and if so, who was he, and so on.

This leads on to secondary controversies over the relationship between the Sinhalese
and the Tamils, over the events which brought about immigration, whether 'ethnic'
antagonism concerned the population or only the rulers, and so on. I am certainly not
setting out to decide these controversies one way or the other, but to point out the
direction they took and what were the arguments used in the debate.[10]
In a recent paper Sudipta Kaviraj mentioned that with the awakening of historical
consciousness and 'national consciousness' in India or Bengal came the question not who
are we, but what can we wreak on the world with our numbers' because we are Bengalis.[11]

While this certainly applies to the Sinhalese equally, it would apply less to the
Tamils, at least in Sri Lanka: not 'what can we wreak on the world', but 'what can we get
out of the world' (because we are Tamils).

Histories instead of stories

At this point, I want to mention a difference in the meaning of the term 'history' in
European and Asian languages. Etymologically, neither the Sanskrit word itihåsa nor the
Tamil word VaralåÂu or Carittiram convey the same meaning as history, which derives from
the Greek to see. Both are nearer to the German term Geschichte[12]
in the sense of what has happened: itihasa means 'that which has happened like that', and
both VaralåÂu Carittiram mean 'that which came about, what happened, the course of
events, also the origin of events'. So there is a strong connection with the question:
where do we come from and how and why are we here, what is our claim to be here? It is a
much less 'objective' and detached, one could perhaps say, a more personalised concept
than the Greek 'that which has been seen'.

Once the Tamils must or want to prove their right to exist, their right to be there,
then the purpose of history is to prove that 'we have always been here, we have more
rights to be in this particular place than anybody else, and we can prove and justify this
with 'historical facts'. It becomes clear then, that the historical problem and the
problem of being there is not at all a general Tamil problem, but that of a particular
group of Tamils: namely those in Sri Lanka.

For the Tamils in India, the problem is there, but it is muted, covered by the attempts
not to prove their right to be there, but to fend off central attempts to subsume them
under a dominant culture and language by claiming the superiority of the one over the
other. It is then sufficient to establish the equal excellence of Tamil culture to counter
this attack (and to establish the former's antiquity, which in reality means timelessness:
Tamil has no beginning in time, it was always there.)

And while the Indian hierarchy subsumes, but does not destroy, for the Sri Lanka
Tamils, being subsumed under a dominant culture always means immediately being robbed of
their right to be there, of their right to exist, of being extinguished (probably
physically) as persons as well as Tamils.[13] Therefore,
religion, culture, way of life, are not sufficient to prove that right, and history has to
come in. The origin and beginning in time of Tamil existence on the island has to
be fixed and proved to be earlier than that of the Sinhalese. So the statement is not like
in Tamilnadu: Tamil has always been there, but we Tamils have always been here.

Thus, history in our sense seems not to unite Tamils all over the world, because they
are already united by religion, culture, language, and way of life, but to divide them
into groups, as the Bengalis have been divided into Bangla Deshis and Bengalis. So are the
Tamils divided into Indian Tamils and Jaffna Tamils. History as history of state, needed
to justify existence in the Tamil case developed strong linkages with nationalism, but
linkages that divide rather than unite: instead of affirming the Tamil identity,
nationalism wrenches it apart, splits it up into all sorts of different Tamil
nationalisms.

At this juncture, the question of territory, irrelevant for Tamil identity as such,
becomes vital: the fatherland and the mothertongue. But this was not always so. It started
when the Tamils acquired and accepted the mentioned western-style historical
consciousness. This was a very specific 19th century phenomenon. It was a view of history
propounded predominantly by German scholars that history was the history of great men and
of nations, that civilisations had their birth, zenith and decline, and that there were
'people without history' which bore a stigma of 'primitivism' and 'savagery'. To have
legitimacy, a western-style 'great' history was therefore deemed necessary.

Yet while saying this, we must remember that it were western scholars who fell to
discovering the 'past' of Ceylon with a vigour enhanced by the fact that Ceylon had a
unique collecton of historical sources which were considered 'historical' even in the
western sense: the chronicles Mahavamsa and Culavamsa. In contrast to the Indians who were
considered to think 'unhistorically', here was a people that did not do so, and the
Mahavamsa was taken as literal truth. There were no obvious comparable sources existent on
the Tamil side. Only much later was it acknowledged that as far as 'historical' accuracy
was concerned, the formerly spurned Indian and Ceylonese inscriptions might provide firmer
ground than the chronicles.

There was, to be sure, a chronicle on the Tamil side, a compilation from the beginning
of the 18th century, ordered to be collected by a Dutch governor and based on some older
chronicles and traditions, partly extant and partly lost. Yet it was never considered
'historical' in the way the Mahavamsa was. With hindsight, this seems rather strange: The
Mahavamsa is as full of myth and superstition as the YåÒppå^a Vaipava Målai is thought
to be.

And while the Mahavamsa is certainly datable to the 6th century, the Culavamsa, its
successor, had constantly been modified and added on until British and even our times. The
truth of the Mahavamsa could only be verified or otherwise when one began to check it
against South Indian inscriptions. Yet the YåÒppå^a Vaipava Målai was not deemed
magnificent enough to stand up beside the Sinhalese chronicles and the South Indian
inscriptions, though the Tamils who considered it a most reliable source, could and later
did prove that not all in it was pure fiction.

However that may be, history of Ceylon in the 19th century was history of all Ceylon as
the history of the Sinhalese.[14] Again, this is a departure from
the past: the colonial powers had before this always emphasised that Ceylon was inhabited
by different 'races' with different traditions and rulers: Burnand, Bertolacci, Cleghorn,
to name a few.[15] In the 19th century, however, the 'Aryan'
Sinhalese were given pride of place and the Tamils termed 'immigrants' with a negative
connotation of the term.[16]

History Recovered

This view of history did not go unopposed by the Tamils and their European
sympathizers, mainly missionaries who in the 40s of the 19th century began to challenge
the view of the history of Ceylon with the remark that the history of the Jaffna kingdom
had been neglected and should be written.[17]

Most interestingly, it was a Christian Tamil paper that voiced this demand for the
first time, and for a long time, Christians were in the forefront of Tamil historiography
in Jaffna: Casie Chitty, UT, Henry Martin, John and Daniel Samuel, Christopher Brito, C.
Ñå~appirakåcar.

These Christians were most eager to discover the historical roots of the Tamils. There
was a simple reason for this: they could not rely for their identity on the religious
context of the Hindus, on sacred texts like the sthalapuranas, epics and the Saiva
Siddhanta literature, therefore they were eager to find a non-religious Tamil tradition to
justify themselves, their existence and their identity.

They found it in Tamil, Indian, and Ceylonese history and in the kingdom of Jaffna
which had been a Hindu kingdom, but had also created literary and scientific works
acceptable to all Tamils and had in its resistance to the Buddhist Sinhala kingdom of the
South shown a spirit of autonomy most welcome to the Christians.

Remarkably, the famous Hindu reformer, ÅArumuka
Nåvalar, who had the fiercest
controversies with the Christians over matters of religion and tried to reform the Saiva
religion and ritual and purge the texts from unacceptable parts, never pronounced on Tamil
or Jaffna history, nor did he doubt the representation of it by these authors. He left
history to the Christians and missionaries, since for his identity it was irrelevant.[18]

In 19th century Jaffna society as a whole history was not needed because Tamils had
other means of identification. They felt a common bond with Tamils in South India and
religious texts sufficed to tell them who they were and where they came from: their past
was their present.

Though in the light of the foregoing discussion we should better say, history in the
western sense of the 19th century was not needed, since the functions fulfilled by history
in the West were taken over by religious and mythical texts. However, once the Tamils
discovered history in the western sense it was not religious texts proper (as among the
Sinhalese) which were used as historical evidence, but quite different, secular, epical
texts, like the KuÂal, Puranå~ËÂu, Cilappatikåram. Religious texts, like the
Sthalapuranams or the Månikkavåcakam, if they were thought to contain historical
information, were used occasionally, but their primary function was not historical.[19]

Today in popular Tamil attitude the religious texts are often considered 'historically
true' and much religious matter still finds its way unquestioned into historical tracts.
But still there is a thin, but visible line between what is considered a historical text
and a religious text. The difference between the two conceptions of history could simply
be that in the West religion has become subsumed in history and in South India, history is
subsumed in religion.

While this might well be the case, we are still plagued by the contradiction shown
above: if we broaden our concept of history as described earlier, we would have to include
in Tamil history a number of texts not hitherto considered as such by the Tamils
themselves, as seen in the example of ÅArumuka Nåvalar. Historical texts were not
deemed necessary for Tamil identity: history was not necessary, since it served other
purposes. To establish identity, stories of the past were sufficient . Distinctions
start to get blurred in the case of the talapuranams which relate the (hi)story of certain
temples, their gods and founders in time and space, and always in Sri Lanka itself.

These therefore often carry other, historical information. This is especially true for
Trincomalee where the available historical information is tied up in the
Kø~[[perthousand]]car Kalve++u, the story of the Kø~[[perthousand]]car temple and the
history has to be reconstructed from this.[20] This again proves
the point: these talapuranams concern temples located in time and space, with a definite
beginning. The god who causes the temple to be founded by his appearance has always been
there, but chooses this particular spot to manifest himself.[21]

The fact, however, that the Tamils had secular stories of the past to draw upon made it
easier for the Christians and later for all of them to fashion a history not tied to
religion and therefore to Tamilnadu, but tied to Jaffna and Ceylon. The contradiction
might be solved if we realize that we are caught in a circular argument: by our concept of
history, the Tamils did not need it to establish their identity, which they found in texts
termed unhistorical by the West:

These unhistorical texts fulfilled historical functions according to western
understanding. But before we term these texts 'historical texts' we have to ask what
function the Tamils assigned to a 'history' as made known to them by the West itself. And
then we can solve the contradiction, since for them, 'history', a concept itself taken
from the West, fulfilled a much narrower function than for the West. Therefore, while we
still may discover historical information in supposedly 'unhistorical' texts, the Tamils
themselves define a historical text much more rigorously because of the different purpose
it serves for them.

The Necessity of History

If the necessity of history was first realized by the Christians, it was seen with
virulence from the last third of the 19th century by the Hindu Tamils, too. Only a couple
of years after ÅArumuka Nåvalar's death and the first translation of the YåÒppå^a
Vaipava Målai by Brito into English in 1879, a 'History of Jaffna' appeared by
Ca+acivappi~~ai in 1884. Some years before that, John Samuel had written one in 1879, of
which only the 9th edition of 1927 is available.[22] A.
Muttutampippi~~ai followed with a History in 1912, reprinted several times, the last time
in 1933, and a host of others.[23]

These histories, of Jaffna or of Lanka were written by scholars of different
persuasions, but all with one aim in mind: to vindicate the existence of the kingdom of
Jaffna. At the same time, some scholars already began to critically examine the available
sources. An early example for this is C.Brito, the translater of the YåÒppå^a Vaipava
Målai who in an annexe compared this with the other Tamil chronicles and included a
discussion on the origin of the Sinhalese language which he derived from an original
dialect Elu, according to him a Dravidian language.[24]

For a later periiod, two names stand out: Fr. S. Gnanaprakasar and C. Rasanayagam
(Råcanåyakam). Both wrote what we would call scholarly historical works on Jaffna and
immediately entered a fierce controversy with each other over the interpretation of the
sources and the evidence. Apart from his monumental English work 'Ancient Jaffna',
Rasanayagam wrote two volumes in Tamil on the history of Jaffna, from the beginning till
the Dutch, and during British times.[25]

But why was it suddenly important for the Tamils to prove their right to be in Ceylon,
their right to exist there as Tamils, to prove that the kingdom of Jaffna was not a myth,
but a 'historical fact'? Several factors have been made responsible for this, but we would
probably come nearest to a solution if we examine these 'histories of Jaffna' as sources
in themselves to see what they tell us not about the ancient history of Jaffna but about
perceptions of history and historiography of the times.[26]

In this case, I want to limit myself to the historiography of the 50 years between
roughly 1880 and 1930, give and take a few years each side, since it seems to me that this
was the time Tamil ethnic consciousness was shaped and the need for history was becoming
virulent. Several questions can, in the light of the foregoing discussion, be addressed to
this material to prove or disprove the points on the perception of history made earlier:

1) what were the conceptions and perceptions of history,

2) how was historical evidence evaluated and used,

3) how does the approach to history and historiography change over time?

History: its content

Immediately we notice a remarkable fact: in all the so-called chronicles, purportedly
outlining the history of Jaffna over several centuries, we find hardly any dates at all,
be they according to the Hindu or the Christian calender.[27]
Only the 'histories' proper that began at the end of the 19th century, attempt to
establish a chronology and thereby existence in time, i.e. legitimate existence. [28][29]

I assume the Yaalppaana Vaipava Maalai as roughly known in this gathering and just want
to mention that it takes the history of Jaffna until the conquest by the Portuguese. It
has remained the basis for practically all further histories of Jaffna and is still a
valuable source for studies of the kingdom of Jaffna.[30]
Obviously the compiler must have known the Sinhalese chronicles since he mingles features
of Sinhalese history with traits of genuine Jaffna or Tamil tradition.

History: a source of information for somebody

Sataciva's `History of Jaffna' is practically a paraphrase of the YåÒppå^a Vaipava
Målai with a few references to additional sources, the Kailaya Malai, Vaiya Padal, and
the Pararasekara Ula. His account about the founding dynasty of Jaffna is slightly
different in that it was the first king, Singaiyariyan Cola, who called the general
Pandimalavan and his clan. He also stresses the policy of forced Sinhalese assimilation
under Vijayabahu as well as the flourishing of literature and culture in Jaffna under
Pararajasekara, on which the YåÒppå^a Vaipava Målai puts less emphasis.

He continues the narrative till British times, on the way mentioning the cruelty and
mismanagement of the Dutch and the blessings of British rule in the shape of educational
and professional possibilities. However, this does not make him blind to the drawbacks as
he sees them: a continuous decline of Saivism and Tamil culture since Portuguese times
which the perfidy of Christian missionaries in converting low castes with false promises
does nothing to stop. He already mentions ÅAÂumuka Nåvalar as the reviver of Tamil
culture and religion.

Sataciva's work sets the tone for a host of other histories of Jaffna until the late
1910s. With few variations, depending on whether the writer takes the YåÒppå^a Vaipava
Målai or other chronicles as his main source, the story remains the same. However, while
Cataciva gives at best very shaky dates, now other writers, the first among them
Muttutampippillai (see below), begin to discuss and work out a chronology. Till 1912, no
history of Jaffna mentions Elara as a Tamil king who has any bearing on the history of Jaffna..
Only histories that purport to tell the history of Ceylon, mention him and other
Tamil invaders and usurpers with their dates, like the History of Ceylon by an anonymous
Brother of St. Joseph's.[31]

Cataciva does not examine the compatibility of the Tamil chronicles with the story as
it emerges from the Mahavamsa nor indeed that of different episodes in the chronicles
themselves, which clearly clash with each other temporally and from the point of
probability. Nor are the apparent contradiction and animosity between Tamils of Jaffna and
the East ever acknowledged and spelt out: it all goes into one amalgamation without any
questions asked.[32] It should be stressed at this juncture that
the sources from the East itself like the Konecar Kalvettu or the Mattakalappu Manmiyam,
tell the story differently, and definitely relate the East to the suzerainity of Kandy,
albeit under Tamil viceroys.

The first to try to disentangle these strands in a rudimentary academic manner in Tamil
is Muttutampippillai in 1912. In his study as well, we have most remarkable variations and
a detailed discussion of the sources.[33] The most interesting
fact is that he for the first time mentions Elara as a Tamil and a Jaffna king and the one
whom På~a~ (Kaviviratnam) so charmed with his yal, that he was given Jaffna as fief. But
more important is that he dates Elara and Ukkiraci[[integral]]ka~ and so the beginning of
the Jaffna dynasty long before Vijaya ever came to Ceylon.[34]

Later authors deduce from this an original rule of Tamils in Jaffna, then a long
Sinhalese interregnum until after the Cola invasion, Tamil kings ruled again.[35] Like Sataciva, Muttuttampi stresses the cultural achievements
of the Jaffna kings and ends his work with a prayer to Murukan to reestablish the proper
temple pucai. Moreover, he takes pains to emphasise the close political and cultural
relations between South India and Eelam, mentioning that the latter (i.e. Jaffna and the
East) was always in some form under the rule of the Cola, Cera, Pandya and Pallava kings,
i.e. under Tamil rule. He lets the Jaffna dynasty proper begin with Kulakkottan in the 9th
century.

He works information from the Mahavamsa and the discovery of the inscriptions into his
account and mentions a Tamil marine made up of Mukkuvars and Timilar. What he has to say
about 'clean' and 'unclean' castes is interesting: because both were separated spatially,
there were no contagious diseases in Jaffna before 1816, when castes were allowed to
mingle and live together![36] Racanayakam echoes this in the 30s,
when he says that it was the 'unclean' plantation Tamils who on their way through Jaffna
brought sickness and disease.[37] Tales of the oppression under
the Dutch and digs at the Sinhalese neglect of temples are common to all stories, but
Muttutampippillai manages to convey a quite vivid picture of social conditions under the
different colonial powers: people who were forced to marry in secret because of wedding
taxes, to discard their jewelry and fine clothes because of luxury taxes etc., who had to
practice their religion in secret due to religious persecution, etc.[38]

Though he repeatedly refers to the treachery of the Vanniyars, the Vanni is
nevertheless described as a refuge for Tamils from Jaffna from religious and other
persecution and consequently as a region from which primary resistance against this
oppression also originated.[39] Colonial rule and soft living
contributed to today's decline, decadence and weakness of the Tamils. He calls for a
return to the halcyon days of early settlement and living Saivite religion and praises
ÅAÂumuka Nåvalar for attempting this. He ends his work with an exhortation to learn the
joys and sorrows of one's history, to be proud of and remember the past and dedicates it
to TamiÒttåy, the Tamil mother.

Samuel John's history, written first in 1878, but only available in a reprint from 1929
with an addendum and preface by his son Daniel, is mainly remarkable for the latter. The
history itself is rather short and follows the usual pattern with a few variations on the
topic of the yal player and the legend of the Vediyarasan brothers, Tamil merchants who
ruled Jaffna together at the time when merchants came from South India to buy jewels for
Kannaki's anklet,[40] all this before Vijaya ever set foot on the
island!

His son takes up the story then and discusses in detail and with frequent references to
Racanayagam's Ancient Jaffna the possible origin of the Aryachakkravartis, whom his father
had considered Cola but whom newer evidence had shown to be probably Pandyan. He resolves
the problem by postulating two Jaffna kingdoms, one Cola, one Pandya Also, the Sinhalese
rebellions and riots are given much room, with a reference to the Kandy king who refused
to interfere, and the Sinhalese are termed the constant inner enemy until Sankili finally
drove them out and "...made Jaffna safe for the Tamils."[41]

Moreover, Daniel tries to relate the history of Jaffna to the wider Ceylonese and South
Indian context with a marked emphasis on the original Tamilness of much that passes for
Sinhalese history. In contrast to his father, he mentions Elara as a Jaffna king.

History: a means to an end against somebody

Until the early 1920s the character of the 'histories remains the same: they are
sources of information - many of them were written as school readers - to provide an
audience largely ignorant about their own past with something to go on with and -
to speak with Muttutampippillai - to give them pride in their past. It was now Hindu
writers who took up the story, in contrast to the early and mid 19th century, when
Christians like Simon Casie Chitty[42] or the UT wrote histories
of Jaffna with a view to show its secular character.

As especially Muttuttampi shows, this trend was sought to be reversed when he stressed
the close linkage between the kingdom of Jaffna, Tamil culture, and religion.[43] This was a topic that would lead to a heated academic
controversy between Christian and Saivite historians in the 20s and 30s. That history has
become a means to an end is clearest in the reprint of Samuel's history: while his account
is still straightforward and factual, his son Daniel in 1929 brings in all sorts of
secondary arguments and accusations against the perfidy of the Sinhalese. The frequent
reprints of these histories shows their interest for the readership.

But the character of the histories now changes in more fundamental ways. For one thing,
the impact of the cataloguing and deciphering of South Indian inscriptions by Hultzsch
from the epigraphia India finally filtered through, and Tamil writers had to revise their
textbooks in the light of these discoveries. These years constitute a watershed in that
now the mythical details of the chronicles are no longer taken at face value as literal
truth and historical fact.

An examination of these instances begins. In these volumes finally western historical
scholarship has been taken on board. Sinhalese rule in the South was no longer implicitly
assumed, but had to be related somehow to the history of Jaffna and begins to be perceived
as having been hostile: Sinhalese tried to rob the Tamils of what was due to them: their
land, their rule, their culture. In this light, the expulsions of the Sinhalese and
Muslims, merely reported in the earlier histories, took on a new quality of betrayal and
punishment.

The invasion of the Colas, glossed over in most earlier histories, had to be
acknowledged and dealt with accordingly, likewise the invasion of Magha. Finally, from
this time onwards, we see a much closer communication and feedback between scholars
writing in English (mostly for the RAS and academic magazines and journals) and those
writing in Tamil.

There is a mutual acknowledgment of work done in the other language, sometimes one
person writes in both languages like Rasanayagam and interpretations are influenced by
wider contexts and outlooks. And above all: via the English literature a feedback also
came in from the Sinhalese side. However, beneficial as these should have been for
academic debate, they served in the end to narrow the outlook: the history of the
Sinhalese and the greatness of their civilization had to be granted and it became clear
that the history and separation of the Tamil and Sinhalese were much less clear-cut and
more complex than hitherto assumed.

On the Sinhalese side, the inherent contradictions in their perception of Tamils and
Tamil history in Ceylon emerged with frightening clarity: On the one hand, they were seen
as the vanguard of the Dravidian kingdoms of South India who had repeatedly invaded
Ceylon, and thus as not belonging to the country and dangerous; on the other hand, when
the Ceylon Tamils set out to prove that they were quite independent politically from the
South Indian empires and had their own state in the shape of the kingdom of Jaffna, this
was swiftly denied and rejected in the most strident terms: it constituted a demand by the
Tamils to have the same right of existence in Ceylon as the Sinhalese, and such a claim
would never do. The only group with an inherent and 'birthright' to Ceylon were the
Sinhalese.

Accordingly, when, in the political climate of the 20s, the Indian connection became
ambiguous, the Tamils began increasingly to feel threatened. History became their mainstay
of legitimation. This led to adventurous and often quite exaggerated claims to Tamil
antiquity and a refabricated and refashioned past: the date of the establishment of the
Aryacakravartti dynasty and the beginning of Tamil settlement on the island were pushed
progressively further back in time, until one could claim that the Tamils had had empires
there centuries before Vijaya. However, the newly available information led to a sustained
academic discussion among Tamil scholars about Jaffna history and about the methods of
historical research.[44]

Much of the new more stringent methodology for research into Tamil history we owe to
Rasanayagam: he widely examines a wealth of very disparate sources and evidence not only
in Tamil, but across the board: the YåÒppå^a Vaipava Målai, inscriptions, the
Mahavamsa, sources from the East which had hitherto been comparatively neglected: Konecar
Kalvettu, Mattakalappu Manmiyam, Greek and Roman writers, Chinese seafarers.

These, however, are all researched and quoted towards one purpose: to prove the
preponderance of Dravidians and Tamils in Ceylon from ancient times. It would be going
beyond the scope of this paper to even summarize the voluminous study by Rasanayagam, but
I give some of the more important points: while following the YåÒppå^a Vaipava Målai
and dating the Aryacakravarttis somewhere in the 9th century starting with
Ukkiraci[[integral]]ka~, he postulates not only Tamil settlements, but also Tamil, or
better Dravidian, rule in Jaffna from time immemorial and bases the whole history of
Ceylon on the assumed equation of the mythical Nagas with proto-Dravidians who had a
splendid kingdom in Nagadipa; flood myths which are as current in Madurai as in South
Ceylon are transposed to Jaffna, the Sinhalese are called a mixture of indigenous tribes,
Aryans and Dravidians, the word Ilam derives from an ancient Dravidian dialect, Elu, and
the word Ilam is far older than Sinhala, thus proving the antiquity of the Tamils,[45] the marital and political relations between the Pandyans of
Madurai were in reality those between Sinhalese and Tamil kings in Jaffna, even under the
Cola occupation the viceroys of Jaffna enjoyed a high degree of independence, all
important cultural and commercial centres mentioned in the ancient literature were
situated in the North, thus making this area the centre of the ancient world.[46]

The confusion in the YåÒppå^a Vaipava Målai over a Kandy that could not yet have
existed is solved by postulating that Kandy was confused with the Tamil Cinkainakar and
equally the problem of the lutist who sang at the court of the Kandy king: this was
another, later lutist, not På~a~, and he sang for Pararacacekaran, not a Kandy king. The
confusion, so Rasanayagam, came about because later Tamil kings were indeed ruling in
Kandy (Nayakkars).

This work pursues quite openly the aim to prove that Sinhalese and Tamils are in
reality one, viz. Dravidians, and has therefore quite recently drawn a lot of flak from
Tamil hard-liners (more than 60 years after its publication and after the author is long
since dead and gone!).

The connections between Tamils and Sinhalese are in fact considered much closer than
those between South India and Jaffna. Another point that drew the criticism of Tamil
hard-liners was his assertion that between the 4th and 9th centuries, there actually was
Sinhalese settlement and Sinhalese rule in Jaffna, and that many place names are of
Sinhala origin.[47] Nallur, too, is a Sinhalese foundation of the
rule of Sapumal in the 15th century.

But however questionable many of Rasanayagam's findings are, to him and to
Gnanaprakasar who refuted many of his claims, has to go the credit to have put the history
of Jaffna and of the SL Tamils on the map of modern academic research. Scholars like
Pathmanathan and Indrapala still have to start with these two authors even if in the end
questioning many of their results.

Racanayakam's Tamil version brings the tale up to British times and gives a vivid
picture of Jaffna in the 19th century, the social, cultural, political and religious life:
strong caste bias and anti-Indian resentment coupled with cautious praise for British
rule.[48] It is during this time that the religious freedom that
came with the British is lauded, and at the same time we hear of attempts to recover the
physical sites of this religion: old temple lands given to Catholics and Muslims,
rebuilding of the Nallur temple and Tiruketicuvaram, etc. It is astonishing how many of
these efforts were successful.[49]

Nanappirakacar also attributes a very early origin to the Tamils in Ceylon.[50] For him both groups in Ceylon are thoroughly mixed of Aryans
and Dravidians, and while in the North, Tamils and Sinhalese got mixed, in the South it
was Sinhalese and indigenous tribes. In a work on the early culture and religion of the
Tamils, he stresses against Veluppillai's criticism that he does not want to denigrate the
Tamils or Saivism with some critical remarks, but to research Tamil history honestly.[51] He postulates a very early Sinhalese settlement in Jaffna, in
fact before the Tamils, but he is also firmly convinced of the existence of the kingdom of
Jaffna and its greatness.[52]

Veluppillai's history is characterized by harsh attacks on the facticity of the
YåÒppå^a Vaipava Målai, Muttutampi's account and Nanappirakacar's history of Jaffna in
the Catholic Guardian.[53] He has a very precise description of
the events after Cankili was defeated by the Portuguese. At the same time he takes issue
with Nanappirakacar who allegedly sees the Portuguese occupation in much too kindly a
light. Though one should not go to the excesses of condemnation of Muttutampippillai, one
cannot overlook Portuguese wickedness, he says.

As Nanappirakacar says, one has to see history 'objectively'.[54]
He refuses, however, to see the Portuguese destruction of temples as founded on religious
hatred: he agrees with Nanappirakacar that this invariably happens in wars as it happened
among Buddhist and Hindu rulers, nevertheless, the people lived peacefully together.[55] He also supports Nanappirakacar in his contention that the
famous story of a Dutch officer who tried to seduce the wife of a Tamil official, which
led to all sorts of treachery, was not a Dutch at all, but a Sinhalese![56]

Veluppillai ends his account with a detailed account of British rule mentioning how
much better this is than all that has gone before. In an annexe about place names he tries
to trace back all place names in Jaffna to Tamil roots. He admits, however, that there was
for sometime Sinhalese settlement there, otherwise the Buddhist remnants were
inexplicable, since the Tamils were never Buddhists! Sinhalese was, in fact, a caste name
for a Dravidian tribe which they had long before Vijaya came. The legend of the Yal is
traced back to Ravana's Vina play.[57]

Veluppillai not only gives very detailed descriptions of the different clans who
emigrated to Jaffna and where they settled, but also of the composition of castes at any
one time in Jaffna and biographies of great Tamils from Dutch times to the present. On the
whole, his account is very balanced, but pointed remarks against the Sinhalese as a
people, not as a ruling dynasty, become more frequent.

Before we close the description of the historiographical literature over 50-100 years,
it would be as well to stress that often the same people who wrote histories of Jaffna,
also wrote general treatises about the 'culture and religion of the Tamils'
(Gnanaprakasar) or about great Tamil poets, philosophers and writers not confined to
Jaffna: the 'Tamil Plutarch' (Chitty).[58] These treatises deal
with a 'Tamilakam' that stretched from the Dekkhan to Ceylon, comprising the lands of the
Colas, Ceras, Pandyas.

The History of Jaffna and the Tamil Culture took place in quite different geographical
realms! For this Tamilakam was a religious and cultural concept, not tied to an actual
geographical area.[59] This again a proof for the theory
discussed above, that history had rather more limited geographical and social purposes
than religion and culture: the former established a right to be there, the latter
confirmed and justified a social structure: a Vellalar-dominated land-based society where
Vellalars were the lords of the ritual, who existed in India as well as in Jaffna.[60]

History needed geography, religion did so only under certain conditions. In
Nanappirakacar study the 'real' Tamils are basically Vellalars and all other castes are
not. The ideological dilemma created in a more liberal age is solved in the end by terming
everybody a - sort of - Vellalar and thus a Tamil.[61] This
indicates, on the other hand, a certain perception of what a 'Tamil' is or was: namely
only a Vellalar, other castes were excluded from being Tamil! This has quite interesting
implications for the question: who were the Tamils in the first place and it echos
R.A.L.H. Gunewardene's contention in 'The people of the Lion' that in the beginning
Sinhalese was not an ethnic category but a name for the ruling group, which only later was
extended to whatever crawled beneath this elite.[62]

Conclusions: History - a political argument

What does this description of the development of historiography in Jaffna have to do
with the armed struggle? In fact, more than we would assume. We asked what purpose did
history and historiography fulfil, and what was their meaning for the people concerned?
What was meant to be their meaning?

The studies discussed let us see that the purpose and meaning of history changed
visibly in the 50 years under consideration. In 1884 Catacivappillai wrote a
straightforward factual narrative of the kingdom of Jaffna, its relations with the
Colas and the Sinhalese kings. Rebellions and riots were something that was regrettable
but did happen from time to time without affecting the common people too much.

They concerned the king and the loyalty due or not due to him. By 1925-30 the history
of Jaffna has become that of the dominance of the Tamil kingdom of Jaffna under a
Tamil king over the rest of Ceylon as Rasanayagam would like to have it and the constant
bad-tempered attempts by the Sinhalese and the Vanniyars to prevent this.

What brought about this change, and what was the purpose of it? The question is,
however, put wrongly, or better, put with reference to the wrong time frame. Once Jaffna
has become a topic in historiography, the other developments followed somewhat naturally,
what we have to ask is, why did Jaffna become a topic in historiography apart from the
rest of Ceylon and apart from South India? As I described above, this happened precisely
towards the end of the 19th century.

Developments both on the Sinhalese and English sides had to do with this: the English
or the Europeans had first 'discovered' India's and Ceylon's (the Sinhalese') great past
in the pursuance of their own historical research.

And both the Sinhalese and the Tamils realised quickly that to possess a great and
glorious - secular - past was something to be cherished, was something that enhanced one's
prestige in the eyes of the foreign rulers, gained respect and status. But there was more
to it.

To have a past, a history, also seemed to confer certain rights, the right to a
territory, to a language, even to self-rule, gave one legitimacy because it defined one's
place and one's standing in the world. To have a religion, a secure identity, to even have
a language and a great literature suddenly was no longer enough. It could contribute to
one's legitimacy, but could not confer this legitimacy in itself.

What was demanded was history, existence in time, not myth. This existence in
time had to be firmly tied to Ceylon geographically and politically to counter the
reproach of a derivative existence or of being an outpost of a powerhungry South Indian
empire. But if religion and culture could confer a sense of identity, this necessary
history could only justify one's existence.

This is a use and a meaning of history much more basic than that in Europe, the
purposes of religion and history seem to have been exchanged: for us religion confers or
should confer the right to be, the justification of existence, and history provides our
identity. For the Tamils, it is exactly the other way round. History justified existence in
time. Unlike Christianity, Saivism in Jaffna could not do that.

That is how theories of European nationalism took hold in Ceylon. The Tamils in general
now found themselves in the situation the Christians had found themselves in 50 years ago
and they fell to discover their history with a vengeance. But the histories written still
were fairly straightforward affairs, little more than a rehash of the chronicles, at best
narratives that took most of the information given as literal truth, meant, and this is
important, for schools, to instruct the following generation in the country's past.[63]

A Sinhala historical consciousness that equated the mythical Demale enemies with the
Tamils in the North seemed to squeeze out and deny the right of the Tamils to the country,
therefore this right had to be affirmed the more strongly. However, the straightforward
histories, still mixed with myth and religion, were no longer enough after the turn of the
century when a more academic and paradoxically also more partisan history was demanded.

The new historiography took basically two forms: either the mythical and irreal content
of history was simply dropped, or great efforts were undertaken to prove how real, natural
and 'true' these mythical events were.[64] This applied to the
strange (almost certainly interpolated) prophesy of the YåÒppå^a Vaipava Målai, to the
exceptionally long life of the first Ca[[integral]]kili (over 100 years), the miraculous
escapes of some priests and their temple idols from religious persecution and the
subsequent discovery of the latter in wells. In more recent years this has been topped by
attempts to separate fact from fiction in the Vijaya myth and other stories by Tamil
writers.

The answer why partisan historiography suddenly became so important, has been given:
every time one side 'scored', be it in terms of civilisation, language, ancient tradition
and religion, durability of rule or, most important, length of stay on the soil of Lanka,
the other immediately had to make good this fault.

A competition began for the most glorious history: a competition to emphasise
differences which until now had been completely irrelevant. But it was more than a
competition for history: it was a competition for political status and privilege,
justified with precisely a history which could only prove itself and endure if it put
another history in its place.

During this race, one became painfully aware of the more sordid and inimical episodes
in the life of the two communities, and the hegemonic understanding of nationalism as an
ideology where one nation can only survive if it affirms itself aggressively against
others, ate deep into the flesh of both groups, so deep, that it became impossible to
envisage another, less limiting kind of nationalism: The English message was found wanting
and new concepts and explanations had to be poured into old images in the vernacular.

What emerged were concepts that might in name resemble the English ones, but whose
content and message differed in vital aspects. Both Tamil and Sinhala were equipped with a
vocabulary that could be drawn upon and used for the 'indigenous' national message. The
concept of nationalism 'indigenised', but this meant that old myths of wars and enemies
were also clothed in the 'national' dress. For the masses, the old enemies became new
ones.

The episode of Elara, resp. Dutthagamani, related only in the Mahavamsa (with high
regard for Elara) and not extant in Jaffna Tamil folklore, suddenly found its way into
Tamil histories with a twist: to show the perfidy of the Sinhalese. Episodes of Tamil rule
in Ceylon which had never been mentioned in the YåÒppå^a Vaipava Målai or Tamil
folklore because the Tamils in Ceylon did not identify with South Indian adventurers,
became instances of Tamil glory.

In the 20s and 30s, historical and historiographical methodology had become refined
enough to enable scholars to give a fairly coherent picture of the Tamil kingdom and the
processes of Tamil and Sinhala settlement. But the refinement of these methods did not
serve to view the whole history of Ceylon more dispassionately, but to score off each
other more effectively. And so it has remained to this day. Academic controversies became
political controversies.

But why was this 'potlatch' necessary in the first place? In a political climate where
numbers and a 'sons of the soil' ideology counted to establish legitimacy, history became
the only means to fuel and underpin political claims and demands: on the glorious history
of the Tamils, demands for balanced representation and special privileges were founded and
justified. In a climate where both groups felt insecure and threatened politically,
history was used to ward off this threat and restore safety. Only history could protect
the Tamils from Sinhalese encroachments.

In the end, History is practiced explicitly to further the greater glory of the Tamils
resp. the Sinhalese. Only history as the property of one side could 'create national
consciousness, define terms, and fill memory'.[65]

The contradiction: Tamilnadu and Jaffna

But the need for history did more. It disrupted not only the Tamils' Ceylonese
identity, whatever that might have been, but it also severed their connections with India
in a final way. And here we have another dilemma: till the late 19th century, the Tamils
like the Sinhalese had been proud of their supposed Indian origin.

In fact, the myth of Tamil immigration was first propounded by the YVM, not by the
Mahavamsa that always accepted that Tamils were somewhere lurking around on the island.
Men of religion like ÅAÂumuka Nåvalar et al. felt as much at home in South India as in
Jaffna. But towards the end of the 19th century, a decisive change occurs. The cultural
unity of South India and Tamil Ceylon remained, but it was superseded and made irrelevant
by political divisions.

The 19th century consciousness that India and Jaffna belonged together as one vanished
with the emergence of the kingdom of Jaffna.[66] Rebels against
colonial rule, like ÅAÂumuka Nåvalaars ancestors had shuttled back and forth between
India and Jaffna, and when things became too hot in Jaffna under colonial rule, they would
depart to India, preferably Chidambaram. But now, ancient Ceylon and ancient India
contracted to ancient Jaffna.

How could this strong connection be disrupted so effectively, and at a time, at that,
when research and myth brought to the forefront the fact of extensive Tamil immigration
into Ceylon over centuries? But that was exactly the point: to justify one's existence in
Ceylon, one's right to be there, suddenly it was no longer enough to have immigrated from
India long ago, the exact point in time of this immigration was made prominent, and there
the Tamils felt to be at a disadvantage to the Sinhalese: Tamil immigration had not only
supposedly been later, but was still going on and was now equated with the immigration of
low-caste, despised Tamil labour from South India.

With these, no self-respecting Jaffna Tamil wanted to have anything to do. Tamil
immigration suddenly became a dirty word. Never mind that the Sinhalese were themselves
immigrants, they were earlier, more civilized, and above all, Aryans from the North!
Therefore, the connections with India had to be suppressed, to be denied and instead the
indigenousness of the Tamils from the beginning, long before any Sinhalese set foot in the
island, to be postulated.

The glory of the Cola conquest looked rather embarrassing when they were considered
invaders and pirates not only by the Sinhalese, but even by the British. History,
therefore, had to look for indigenous history in Jaffna, in the East, and in the Vanni,
and it found what it was looking for. The whole extraordinariness of this process becomes
clear when we consider, that for the Tamils in India, till today, Tamilakam is the land of
the Colas, Ceras, Pandyas, and to a lesser extent, the Pallavas, three or four dynasties
who continuously fought against each other for supremacy in South India.

But nobody, not even the most rabid Tamilnadu Tamil nationalist has ever undertaken to
claim that one dynasty was more Tamil than the other, or that one had to be extolled at
the expense of the others, or that only one really ruled the Tamilland, whereas the others
were impostors, though some dynasties ruled at the same time and were often hostile to
each other.

On the contrary, all three or all four are considered equally 'Tamil', equally
glorious, and are treated with remarkable impartiality in Tamil historiography, the fact
notwithstanding, that the Cera king ruled over what today is Kerala. Nor are there, on the
other hand, noises of irredentism being heard to get Kerala 'heim ins Reich' because of
its one time Tamil king. These noises, if they ever amounted to anything, died with the
Nam Tamilar movement, the 'hurray Henrys' of the 50s.

The fact that the famous epic Cilappatikaram takes place in all three Tamil kingdoms,
is mentioned with pride till this day. The Tamil cultural 'nation' rarely coincided with
any one territorial state.[67] The Tamils did not bother, except
for the Ceylon Tamils. For them, history became an extremely limiting exercise in that it
circumscribed and constricted what Anderson has called the 'pilgrimage' of the civil
servant.[68] For them to be apart from India politically and to
claim their own state became a question of their political and social survival.

And that leads us to the final question, whether, if this was the case, the Tamils in
Ceylon were not really somewhat unique, different from those in India, the close proximity
notwithstanding, whether the undoubted fact of their political autonomy had not generated
a degree of cultural, religious and linguistic independence as well, but an independence
which has become, in the late 20th century, extremely limiting and downright dangerous.

There have been attempts to reverse this trend: Followers of Arumuka Nåvalar's
religious tradition always saw India and Jaffna as one and unseparated and stressed the
unity.[69] The dilemma of being torn between South India and
Jaffna is most evident in the writings and ideology of the militants for whom India again
became the vanishing point when things in Jaffna got too hot, in the good old tradition,
but who now have changed their song again and consider themselves as primarily belonging
to Sri Lanka. That is the dilemma of the Jaffna Tamils.

Thus, the close connections to Tamilnadu are more ephemeral than those to 'Tamilakam'.[70] Today we can clearly say that these cultural, religious and
linguistic and, even more vital, social, independence and distinction exists and existed
also in the early 20th century. The Tamils feel to be a people, not to say a nation,
distinct as much from India as from Sinhalese Sri Lanka. And the militants have gone a
step further in their use of history: it is now not only an instrument of justification,
but a weapon in the militant struggle: ancient means and weapons, ancient violence and
ancient ideologies are used to fight a modern enemy who is, however, seen as also ancient.

However, the fact that today the Tamils do feel as a nation shows the dynamism of
processes that took place during the 19th century, conscious and unconscious policies and
attitudes, that were innocuous in themselves, but ended up as two nations divided. Whether
it is good or bad, it is too early to say, but once put in motion, the process could not
be reversed. The Angel of History was pushed forward and destruction piled up before him.

And if a group of people do feel unique and entitled to certain privileges on account
of belonging to this group, all the talk in the world and least of all 'historical proof'
will make them abandon this concept as long as its social, political, cultural and
economic advantages seem to outweigh the disadvantages. Therefore, the Ilam Tamils are a
nation, and history will always be perceived by them as judging in their favour. For them,
that is the meaning of history.

3The 'Historikerstreit' in Germany of the years 1986-87 is a good case in
point: a recovery of national history was attempted not last by comparing it with the
sordid histories of other countries and thus making it relative. For a summary and
discussion of the HS in English see Australian Journal of Politics and History,
Supplementary Edition 1899, esp. the articles by George G. Iggers, Irmline Veit-Brause,
John H. Jensen and Martin Travers.

4There seems to be a similarity here with the Germans who also had to prove
their right to exist in decent international society after the war, but the reasons and
the point of departure are so vastly different that such comparisons are extremely
doubtful. Yet, it might be worthwhile to state here that the Germans, as the Tamils,
undertake to justify their demands or assumptions with secondary virtues neglecting more
basic primary human virtues and rights.

5Kapferer, Bruce, Legends of People, Myths of State, Violence, Intolerance,
and Political Culture in Sri Lanka and Australia, Washington and London 1988.

6ibid., p. 50.

7To be sure, karma comes into the YVM, as we will see later, when the
decline of the dynasty is attributed to the misdeeds of one of its members and to the
disunity among themselves, but this is probably based less on the theory of karma than on
that of cause and effect in politics also known in the West.

10For a thorough discussion of the historicity of the kingdom of Jaffna and
the historical sources about it see S. Pathmanathan, The Kingdom of Jaffna, Part I. (circa
AD. 1250-1450), Colombo 1978.

11Kaviraj, Sudipta, On the Construction of Colonial Power: Structure,
Discourse, Hegemony. Paper presented at the conference on Foundations of Imperial
Hegemony: Western Education, Public Health and Police in India and Anglophone Africa, 1859
until Independence. Berlin, 1-3 June 1989, organised by German Historical Institute,
London, p. 14.

12In German, 'story' and 'history' are expressed by the same word:
Geschichte, the differentiation is in the definite or indefinite article: eine Geschichte
= a story, die Geschichte = history

13cf. Kapferer, op. cit., p. 71 and passim.

14One wonders whether that has anything to do with the Colebrooke-Cameron
reforms in 1833 that united the country administratively.

15Burnand and Cleghorn

16As I am here concerned with the Tamil view, I leave out a detailed
discussion of the influence theories of race and the discovery of the 'Aryan' languages
and race may have had in this regard, but they were and are certainly vital to the
Sinhalese view.

24Christopher Brito, The Yalppana Vaibhava Malai, or the history of the
Kingdom of Jaffna, translated from the Tamil by..., Colombo 1879, Appendix p. XLV-LIII)

25S. Rasanayagam, Ancient Jaffna, Colombo 1926, C. Ñå~appirakåcar, OMI,
TamiÒi~ PËrvacarittiramum Camayamum (The ancient history and religion of the Tamils),
Jaffna 1912, (first published as a series of articles in the Jaffna Catholic Guardian).

27YåÒppå~a Vaipava Målai (The Garland of Events in Jaffna), by
Mayilvåka~ap Pulavar, with an Appendix by Kula Capanåta~, Colombo 1953. The YVM itself
is declaredly made up of older sources and chronicles, which are partly extant, partly
lost: the Kailåya Målai, the Vaiyå På+al, the
C[[perthousand]]karacac[[perthousand]]kara Ulå, and the Tak[[Sigma]]i~a Kailåca Målai.

29This is generally considered a reflection of the Cola invasion and rule in
the 10th and 11th centuries.

30Pathmanathan, op.cit.; K. Indrapala, Dravidian settlements in Ceylon and
the beginnings of the Kingdom of Jaffna. Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of
Philosophy, University of London 1965 (unpubl.)

31Brother of St. Josephs's, op.cit. p. 19. He has a special chapter on the
kings of Jaffna, (pp. 88-96) but in these, Elara is not included.

42S.C. Chitty, On the History of Jaffna. From the Earliest Period to the
Dutch Conquest. JRAS (CB) II, 1847-48, p. 69

43Muttutampippi~~ai, op.cit., p. 134ff.

44Velluppi~~ai, op. cit., p. 79/80 and passim. C. Ñå~appirakåcar, OMI,
YåÒppå~a Vaipava Vimarca~am (A Critical History of Jaffna), Accuv[[perthousand]]li
1928. The latter work has unfortunately been unavailable to me till now.It was written
with a view to refute some of Rasanayagam's claims in his Ancient Jaffna, and this
generated a rejoinder by V[[perthousand]]luppi~lai. However, from the extensive quotes in
V[[perthousand]]luppi~~ai and from some other works by Ñå~appirakåcar on the culture
and religion of the Tamils as well as from his articles in the JRAS etc. we can deduce the
drift of his argument.

59We can compare this to the concept of the `Ër' for Tamils in Singapore
today, for whom this is not a geographical, but an ideal place, and even with the
Sinhalese concept of India which is twofold: in political and geographical terms, it is
'India' or 'Bharat', but there is another, religious concept for India as 'Jambudvip'
which is remembered with reverence and nostalgia in contrast to the strident tones about
'India'. I thank Mr. Somadasa from the British Library for drawing my attention to this
difference.

60For the differences in this concept among Tamils in India and in Jaffna,
see Bryan Pfaffenberger, Caste in Tamil Culture. The Foundations of Sudra Domination in
Tamil Sri Lanka, (Bombay 1982).

61C. Ñå~appirakåcar, op. cit., p. 19-22

62Gunawardene, R.A.L.H., The People of the Lion: Sinhala Consciousness in
History and Historiography. in: Ethnicity and Social Change in Sri Lanka, Social
Scientists Association, (Colombo 1985), p. 55-107.

63An example for this is Rasanayagam (1870-1940) who was Gate Mudaliyar and
a magistrate in the Jaffna Kaccheri between 1920 and 1929. He wrote his books both before
and after retirement. His and other short biographies can be found in
M[[perthousand]]~makka~ Carittiram (Mayn Makkal Charittiram: Eminent Men's Lives), n.p.,
n.d. (probably 1930s) and in Ka~apatip pi~~ai, ÁÒa nå++i~ TamiÒc cu+arma^ika~ (Radiant
Tamils of ÁÒam), Colombo 1967, p. 38-41.

64e.g. V[[perthousand]]luppi~~ai, op. cit., who tries to demonstrate why
this prophesy must be true. p. 33